Sergio Díaz-Briquets, Casals & Associates
and Jorge F. Pérez-López, U.S. Department of Labor
1 This paper presents only the personal views of the authors. We are grateful to José Alvarez and Arturo Pino for their very useful comments on an earlier draft.
2 To illustrate the relationship between irrigation and yields, Cuban technicians have estimated that non-irrigated citrus plantations yield about six metric tons of fruit per hectare, while irrigated lands have potential yields of over 40 tons (Riego, 1982:61).
3 The irrigation data, as many other Cuban statistics, must be used cautiously. According to other irrigation figures reviewed here, the land surface under irrigation is far less than the 2.95 million hectares claimed in this source. The 1989 Anuario Estadístico (p. 215) indicates that the total amount of land irrigated in the state sector reached 896 thousand hectares, an estimate consistent with the 900,000 hectares used by other sources consulted for this paper.